The Model Wife (14 page)

18

Poppy was in two minds about meeting Barbara. All week she kept remembering more and more things she’d loathed about modelling: the competitive undereating, the bitchiness, the obligatory fag-haggery involving cooing over pictures of Kylie Minogue, necessary if the guys who did hair and make-up were not to make you look like Bet Lynch on a bad-hair day.

But after three days with Brigita in the house, Poppy knew she would expire from a combination of boredom and sadness if she didn’t find some work. Now the novelty of being able to have a bowel movement in private had worn off, she missed Clara’s company desperately. Hearing her laughing in another room caused her physical pain. Poppy was forever rushing in to pick her daughter up and smother her in kisses but, whenever she did, Brigita’s lips would curl into a sulky snarl.

‘I tell you is best Mummy keeps out of the way. You go enjoy.’

Poppy decided she had nothing to lose by at least dropping in to see Barbara. So having doublechecked she was in the diary for Friday, she spent fifteen times longer than usual getting dressed in jeans that held in her post-Clara muffin-top and a turquoise T-shirt the same colour as her eyes. She never normally used her hairdryer because Clara was petrified of the noise, but with Brigita in charge she styled her blonde locks with her round brush, then applied her make-up. When she looked in the mirror she scarcely recognized herself. She hadn’t looked so polished since – well, probably since her wedding day.

‘Poppy!’ cried Glenda, sticking her head round the door, Pledge in one hand, duster in the other. ‘Good morning to you!’

‘Hi, Glenda, how are you? How are the children?’

‘They are well. I spoke to them on Sunday after church. Fernando he is playing good football, I am so proud. Maribel is worried because she has a fight with a friend. I miss them.’

‘It must break your heart.’ As always, Poppy felt overwhelmed at how pathetic her problems were in comparison with Glenda’s. But her cleaner just shrugged.

‘At least I make a good living. Do my best for them.’ She looked at Poppy. ‘But you look so pretty today, darling. Where are you going?’

‘I’ve got a sort of job interview.’

‘Looking so beautiful, you will get any job you want. Good luck, my sweetheart. Let me know what happens.’

‘I will. I’ll text you.’

It was one of those dishonest spring days when the sun shone down so boldly people began to think of putting their winter coats away. A day when the evening papers would be full of pictures of two pretty girls sunbathing in Hyde Park next to some early daffodils and everyone would feel guilty about enjoying what was such a sure sign of global warming, only to wake the next day to find the mercury had dropped again and start investigating foreign holidays on the internet. As Poppy headed towards the Tube, she realized men were looking at her in a way they hadn’t looked for a long time. It felt surprisingly good.

‘You sad woman. You’re married,’ she chided herself.

At Oxford Circus she emerged into the light and headed off through the maze of sleazy but exciting Soho back streets towards her agency with its tatty black door. The waiting room was just as she remembered it: the walls lined with framed magazine covers featuring the agency’s top girls. Once Poppy had been among them, but she’d been quietly removed. A girl who looked about twelve with legs that stretched on forever was lounging on the sofa, reading
Harper’s Bazaar
. She glanced at Poppy pityingly as if she’d wandered in from the Help the Aged offices four doors down. The receptionist, who appeared all of thirteen, cleared her throat.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I’m here to see Barbara.’

‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘
Yes
. I’m Poppy Price.’

‘Oh, yeah. Go on through.’

Poppy pushed open the plate-glass door and walked into the main booking room with its intoxicating aroma of Jo Malone candles. Tiny speakers boomed out cool tunes that competed with the noise of nine skinny women sitting round a huge rectangular table yelling into mouthpieces as if they were trading copper in the City rather than finding the ideal candidate for a new anti-dandruff shampoo. ‘Has anyone checked the photographer for Alix?’ ‘Have you found a hotel for Kate?’ No one even looked at Poppy as she headed towards Barbara’s office in the back right corner.

She tapped at the glass door and was motioned to come in. Surprise, surprise, her old mentor was on the phone. ‘Yeah, OK, well, maybe she should go to the Priory? Or that other clinic in Jersey? Hi, Poppy, sit down, angel, be with you in a second… Yeah, I know last time the staff sold stories on her, but the woman in question’s been sacked… Look, if she wants to do rehab in Arizona that’s fine by me – whatever. Just get her there soon… because clients are starting to ask questions… They noticed the needle marks between her toes.’

Poppy looked at a huge signed photo of Daisy McNeil on the desk in front of her. ‘To Babs, Love, love, love yoooou! D xx’

‘Look, I gotta go. An old friend’s here.’ She smiled at Poppy. ‘OK, keep me posted, bye. Poppy!’ She got up and kissed her. ‘Poppy! Back from the dead! It’s a miracle.’

‘Well, not
dead
. I just had a baby.’

‘I’m sure you used to have a sense of humour,’ Barbara said and then, seeing Poppy’s hurt expression, ‘Joke! Ha! Proving my point rather,’ she added under her breath. ‘So let’s have a look at you.’ A long silence followed as she scanned her. ‘Yes. Pretty good. Probably could do with shifting another seven pounds, but you’re almost there. I’m sure there’s some catalogue work I could put you up for. In fact, I think the Mothercare catalogue just called.’

‘Oh,’ Poppy said. Catalogue work was the Bernard Matthews turkey twizzlers of the modelling world. ‘Not editorial?’

‘Well, possibly. I think Sharon mentioned a cookery magazine looking for girls. I’ll have to have a chat with her. Sweetheart, don’t pull that sulky face. The wind might change. We might get you back doing editorial, but like I say, you need to shift the last few pounds. They’re on your face you see, sweetie, that’s the problem. Also, you’re how old now… twenty-six?’

‘Twenty-four.’

‘So obviously your shelf life is coming to an end. In high fashion at any rate. There’s always plenty of work for the mature lady, obviously. Plus, don’t take it the wrong way, but while you’ve been away, fashion’s changed completely. The wholesome look’s out. Edgy is in again. It’ll swing back in a year or so, it always does, but what the magazines are all asking for now is grungy. Which I am very happy to say, you are not.’

‘But I could be!’ Poppy cried, full of regrets at having washed her hair and scrubbed her nails that morning.

Barbara laughed and shook her head. ‘Poppy, you’re a California girl who got lost in London by mistake. You should be jogging along the beach in Malibu not trudging round the West End.’ She glanced at her Tag Heuer. ‘Look, sorry to cut things short but I’ve got a lunch and I need to speak to Tokyo first. Off you run. But don’t worry. I’m sure something will come up. I’ll be in touch soon.’ She pressed her buzzer. ‘Sweetheart, send Jasmine in please and tell her I’m sorry to have kept her waiting.’

And before she knew it, Poppy was back on the street, blinking slightly in the daylight. She couldn’t believe how briskly she’d been dealt with. The rest of the day still stretched ahead of her as empty as Westbourne Grove on Christmas morning. She could go to an exhibition, she supposed, but even her normally voracious appetite for art was dulled as if she’d eaten a packet of cotton wool, that popular modelling trick. She’d go for a walk, she decided, clear her head.

She wandered through Soho Square with its tiny patch of grass that in an hour or so would be obliterated by picnicking office workers, funny, half-timbered gardener’s hut in the middle and statue of King Charles II and the bench commemorating Kirsty MacColl. Down the narrow, urine-soaked alleyway that ran behind the Astoria where Poppy had once been with her still-in-the-closet boyfriend Alex to see Geri Halliwell, then across the road past the vast, ugly Centrepoint and down shabby New Oxford Street and into the Georgian streets of Bloomsbury. The dejection she’d felt just a few minutes ago disappeared, replaced by the exhilaration of being out alone, without a buggy to slow her down containing a passenger demanding juice and rice cakes.

Finding herself outside the British Museum she decided to go in. She’d taken Clara here to see the mummies several times; she’d go back now and enjoy some other pieces. She crossed the great domed lobby where Clara loved to charge about. A woman, coming out of the door that led to Egyptian antiquities, stood back to hold it open for her.

‘Thank you,’ Poppy said and then as her brain switched into gear, she exclaimed, ‘Oh! Hello.’

‘Hello,’ said Thea Mackharven.

‘What are
you
doing here?’ Poppy immediately realized this sounded rather rude. ‘Sorry. I mean not that there’s any reason why you shouldn’t be here but…’

‘It’s not that far from work. I often come here in my lunch hour.’

‘Of course,’ Poppy said, then desperate to please, ‘Which bit do you like best?’

That scornful look from Dean’s dinner party that had scorched itself on Poppy’s soul was out again in force. ‘I quite like the Sumerians,’ Thea said loftily.

‘Oh, me too. I find it amazing that Sumeria is now Iraq. I always used to love reading about the hanging gardens of Babylon. It sounded so idyllic and now it’s this dusty, messed-up country.’ Poppy knew she was gushing but nerves had got the better of her. ‘At least, Luke says it’s dusty and messed up.’

‘Mmm. Luke and I have worked in Iraq a lot.’

The way Thea said it made Poppy’s insides shrivel. ‘Well, nice bumping into you,’ she gabbled, looking at her watch. ‘Is that the time? Oh, dearie me! I’d better be off now.’

‘Bye,’ said Thea, as Poppy hurried out of the museum into the sunlight, wondering why that horrible woman hated her so much.

19

A week had passed. All day it had been raining torrentially. Parts of Britain were suffering from the worst flooding in centuries. But not, to Poppy’s bitter disappointment, the village of Brettenden in Oxfordshire, where their school reunion was being held that night. At six sharp Meena was sitting outside Poppy’s front gate in her shiny Audi, a present from her doting dad, ready to ferry her friend back to their alma mater.

‘God, what took you?’ she yelled when, fifteen minutes later, Poppy, sodden from running just three yards from the front door down the garden path, jumped into the car beside her. ‘I’ve smoked at least ten fags while I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘Sorry, sorry. Clara threw her supper all over the dress I was going to wear, so I had to get changed at the last minute.’

‘Christ, I’ve been cacking myself,’ said Meena, with her usual poetic charm. ‘I’m so bloody nervous I think I’m going to have to drop a Valium.’

‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea if you’re driving,’ Poppy admonished her gently, but Meena was too busy checking out Poppy’s outfit to notice.

‘Oh God, Poppy. I mean, you look pretty and everything like you always do, but couldn’t you have worn something a bit funkier?’

‘Oh.’ Poppy had thought she’d looked all right in her floaty black chiffon skirt and blue cardigan. She glanced at Meena in skinny jeans and a green T-shirt. Somehow she’d got it exactly right – looking as if she hadn’t made any effort while still being dazzling. Poppy, on the other hand, looked like the boring dependable mum she had become.

‘Christ, I’m dreading this,’ Meena squawked, scrutinizing her eye make-up in the mirror as they sped up the outside lane of the A40, rain tom-tomming on the bonnet. ‘Why did you make me go, Poppy?’

‘I didn’t make you! You made me. I told you it would be terrifying.’

‘What’s the problem for you? You’re married to a rich and sort-of famous man. You’ve got a beautiful baby. What about me? Single. Receptionist. I was meant to have it made by twenty-one.’

‘Being married doesn’t mean you’ve got it made,’ Poppy said softly.

Meena glanced at her, hitting the motorway and roaring into fifth. ‘Is Luke giving you grief again?’

‘Well… he’s a bit cross because I told the nanny we’d pay her twelve pounds an hour. But it was him who wanted a nanny, not me.’

‘Mean git.’ Meena cut in front of a white van. Poppy grasped the edges of her seat. ‘He’s loaded, isn’t he?’

‘I don’t know. He keeps complaining about how broke he is with all the other children’s school fees.’

‘Shouldn’t be sending them to posh schools then. I always told Dad he’d be better off putting the cash in the bank to buy me boob job. Or pay my dowry.’

‘So what’s the latest man news?’ Poppy asked.

‘Boring. Quiet. No City boys around at the moment; they’re all trying to get their bonuses. I keep begging Mum and Dad to fix me up with this cousin of ours who’s a software mogul in Bangalore, but they say arranged marriages are old-fashioned. Like I care.’

Despite the weather, it seemed no time at all before they were passing through the high gates that marked the beginning of Brettenden’s long, gravel drive.

‘Oh, help. I’m seriously spooked out. Turn the car round, Meena. Let’s go and have a curry in Henley. I can’t face this.’

‘Shall I?’ They were pulling up in the car park now, tyres fizzing on the wet tarmac. ‘I could, couldn’t I?’

‘Go on.’ Poppy nodded. Meena placed her hand on the gear stick but just as she was about to reverse, there was a tap on the window.

‘Meena! Poppy! Hey!’

Gurning through the rain-streaked glass was a round face set off by black-rimmed spectacles. Strawberry-blonde hair in bunches. Green spotty raincoat.

‘Oh, fuck me,’ Meena said. ‘It’s Lolly Frickman. Shit, last time I saw her she was crying because she’d lost out on being Yum Yum in Mrs Grinder’s production of the
Mikado
.’ Lolly tapped again. Meena sighed and wound down the window. ‘Lolly! God, look at you! You look
great
.’

‘Thanks,’ beamed Lolly, ‘you too. Nice to see you, Poppy.’

‘And you,’ Poppy said, realizing the game was up. She got out of the car, looked up at Brettenden’s Gothic facade, shiny in the rain. ‘Yuk. Return to Colditz.’

‘Didn’t you like BH?’ Lolly was astounded.

‘No, I hated it,’ Poppy said, as they hurried up the wet stone steps and pushed open the vast green doors that led into the entrance hall. It still smelt of polish and pubescent sweat and its walls were still covered with green boards where the achievements of OBHs, as they were known, were set out in gold leaf. Meena and Poppy always used to giggle about them. ‘Greatest number of doughnuts ever consumed without licking the lips: Meena Badghabi.’ ‘Largest number of excuses concocted to get out of netball: Poppy Price.’ Poppy turned her attention to Lolly, who, after exchanging animated boasts with Meena, was now tugging at her sleeve.

‘So, Meena’s an executive for the Holmes Place group. And what about you, Poppy?’

‘I’m married.’ A touch defensively, she added, ‘Happily married.’

Lolly laughed. ‘No way! You are joking aren’t you?’

‘No,’ Poppy said as they walked in to the old assembly hall, full of screeching women. God, was that Amelia Crinch? She
must
have had a nose job. ‘I’ve got a baby.’

‘Really?’ said Lolly taking a glass of white wine from a trestle table and downing it in one. ‘How grown-up. I don’t think I could be coping with a baby just yet. Nappies, eeeuch! And sleepless nights. No thank you.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ Poppy said, a bit hurt she hadn’t congratulated her or asked to see photos. ‘What are you up to, Lolly?’

‘I’m an accountant.’ Lolly fiddled with one of her hair slides. ‘Got a traineeship when I graduated. It’s pretty amazing. I meet all sorts of interesting people and the money’s great too. I’ve just put a deposit down on a new-build flat in Paddington.’

‘I live near there! In Maida Vale.’

She didn’t know why, really, because she’d never even liked Lolly who had the dubious distinction of being Brettenden House’s most boring girl despite stiff competition, but it was still a bit of a blow when instead of saying, ‘Oh how great, we must meet up some time’, she responded, ‘Oh. Right.’

‘Yes,’ Poppy said. She felt oddly humiliated. Her life was meant to be every woman’s Holy Grail: married to a handsome, successful older man, with a beautiful daughter, a lovely home in a desirable part of London and childcare to boot. Why did people with their nine to five office jobs look at her so condescendingly? ‘Must find the loo,’ she mumbled, ‘see if they’re still as stinky as they used to be.’ But as she turned on her heel, a voice cried.

‘Poppy? Is that Poppy Price?’

A glamorous woman with short brown hair in a green minidress, long black boots and sporting what Poppy recognized as the latest Balenciaga bag came towards her. Poppy thought of pretending she had no idea who she was, but what would have been the point?

‘Migsy Remblethorpe!’ She’d been one of the coolest girls in the year, always surrounded by other cool girls who giggled at her catty put-downs and copied her outfits. Apart from asking Poppy to pass the salt a couple of times at dinner, they’d never exchanged a word. ‘How are you?’

‘Really well.
Really
well. It’s funny to be called Migsy, I’ve been Michelle for years now. So what are you up to?’

‘I’m a model,’ Poppy said. No way was she peddling the ‘mother’ line again.

‘Really? I thought they had to be, like, anorexic. How refreshing to see a real woman doing it.’

Perhaps she shouldn’t have lied. ‘Well, I
was
a model, but I’ve got a small child now, so… How about you, Migsy?’

Migsy smiled smugly. ‘I work for
Wicked
magazine. Do you know it? I’m the features editor. It’s so much fun. I get to travel all over the place and meet so many celebrities.’

‘Oh, yes. Like who?’

‘Well, tomorrow I’m going to interview Marco Jensen. You know? The gorgeous guy who reads the
Seven Thirty News
.’

‘He doesn’t read the
Seven Thirty News
! My husband does.’

‘Your husband?’ Migsy shouted, so loudly that the huddle next to them, including Fleur Mappleton-Wise, whose father apparently owned the whole of Northamptonshire, stopped talking and stared at them.

‘Yes.’ Poppy could almost feel her chest puffing up. ‘His name’s Luke Norton.’

‘
Luke Norton?
’ Migsy shrieked, so the sleek blonde heads turned again. ‘What? You mean the cad?’

‘I…’

‘
You’re
the Bimbo?’ From the expression on her face, you’d have thought Migsy had unearthed Lord Lucan disguised in a gymslip.

‘Well…’

‘God, Poppy, I love those columns. They’re
hilarious
. And they’re all about
you
. Oh my God.’ A slow smile crossed her face. ‘We should keep in touch. Are you on Facebook?’

‘Um. No. It’s not easy for me to do stuff on computers, my daughter keeps pulling the wires out.’

‘Not on
Facebook
?’ Migsy looked as if Poppy had admitted to a fondness for pulling down her knickers in public. ‘Right. Well. Do you have a card?’

‘I’m afraid not. Sorry.’

Migsy fumbled hastily in her huge green tote bag and pulled out her phone. ‘Quick, what’s your number?’

Poppy told her and Migsy jabbed it in.

‘Great,’ she said, kissing Poppy on both cheeks. ‘I’ll give you a call really soon. Let’s go for a drink. Catch up on old times.’

‘I’d like that,’ Poppy said, and wondered what her life had come to that she actually meant it.